Mobile wireless communication devices, such as a cellular telephone or a wireless personal digital assistant, can provide a wide variety of communication services including, for example, voice communication, text messaging, internet browsing, and electronic mail. Mobile wireless communication devices can operate in a wireless communication network of overlapping “cells”, each cell providing a geographic area of wireless signal coverage that extends from a radio network subsystem located in the cell. The radio network subsystem can include a base transceiver station (BTS) in a Global System for Communications (GSM) network or a Node B in a Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) network. Newer mobile wireless communication devices can include the capability of providing several different communication services simultaneously, such as a voice call and data internet browsing at the same time. A separate radio access bearer can be used to transport radio link signals for each of the services between the mobile wireless communication device and one or more radio network subsystems in the wireless network. From the perspective of a user of the mobile wireless communication device, each of the communication services transported over the separate radio access bearers can be considered independent, and therefore changes to a connection through one radio access bearer should impact minimally connections using a separate radio access bearer. Certain communication protocols, such as the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) UMTS specifications, can treat a multiple radio access bearer connection as a single connection, resulting in multiple services changed together rather than separately.
Data usage through wireless communication networks has increased substantially with the introduction of advanced mobile wireless communication devices. As the number of data users has increased, the wireless communication networks can incur congestion and scheduling issues that affect the delivery of data to the mobile wireless communication device. In some situations, a mobile wireless communication device connected simultaneously by a voice connection and a data connection can continue to receive voice signals when no data or acknowledgements are received from the network. The mobile wireless communication device can be configured to retransmit, reset and ultimately terminate the radio link with the wireless communication network when the data connection appears unrecoverable. Terminating the radio link, however, can remove both the data connection and the voice connection, even though the voice connection can be operating properly.
Thus there exists a need to control multiple radio access bearers between a mobile wireless communication device and one or more radio network subsystems in a wireless communication network that releases connections independently.